SUOMI NPP, previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the NOAA. Originally intended as a pathfinder for the NPOESS programme, which was to have replaced NOAA's Polar Operational Environmental Satellites and the U.S. Air Force's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, Suomi was launched in 2011 after the cancellation of NPOESS to serve as a gapfiller between the POES satellites and the Joint Polar Satellite System which will replace them. Its instruments provide climate measurements that continue prior observations by NASA's Earth Observing System. The satellite is named after Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The name was announced on January 24, 2012, three months after the satellite's launch. The satellite was placed into a sun-synchronous orbit 824 km (512 miles) above the Earth.[8]